So it begins. The news articles are coming more frequently on the impact of social service cuts due to budget shortfalls. Christy did a couple of posts December 31 and January 1 on Mortgaging The Nations Future: Child Poverty and Abuse On the Rise. Besides her links in these posts, we will be seeing stories like this one from the Denver Post: Denver Child Agency Hires Stall:

Faced with a possible $29 million deficit by 2010, leaders of Denver’s Department of Human Services may renege on their commitment to boost the number of caseworkers who protect children from abuse.

Last year, the agency asked the Denver City Council to authorize the hiring of an additional 38 child- protection workers, saying doing so was needed to stem a growing controversy over the deaths of children who were killed by caregivers after being seen by caseworkers and left in abusive homes.

Now the agency says attrition has reduced the child welfare staff to where it was before that commitment was made.

Of course, the agency is trying to put a best-face on this but the reality is, every social service agency is under-funded. We just do not really pay attention unless the news stories of at-risk children start leading the nightly news.

And it is not just at-risk children as this story from today’s New York Times tells us, Budget Cuts Imperil Guardian Program for Elderly and Disabled:

The Guardianship Project, a small organization that protects elderly and disabled people who have no one else to act as their legal guardians, has not been around long enough to stand out in the labyrinth of social service agencies and nonprofit groups that work on behalf of the city’s most vulnerable residents.

Because of the state’s vast budget shortfall, the four-year-old program probably never will.

Barring a last-minute reprieve, it will shut down in April, leaving more than 100 people who are served by the program to be transferred to other services, and ending what some advocates viewed as a promising model for revamping the state’s troubled guardianship program.

So here we are. We like to think of ourselves as a compassionate and caring people. We perceive ourselves as being advanced and willing to do for others. Yet we put the lie to this notion as soon as the economic hard times arrive by cutting the services necessary to help those that are least able to help themselves. We put the lie to our ideals by leaving those in the dawn of their lives and the twi-light.

Of course, as these services are being cut, what do we see in Washington? Why the celebration by the Traditional Media of the "Centrists" Push for More Cuts. Ebeneezer Scrooge lives on.